Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  A troupe of guards conies riding, with a lady and her gold

  She rides bemused among them, shrouded in her cloak of fur

  Companioned by a maiden and a toothless, aged cur.

  Three things see no end, a flower blighted ere it bloomed,

  A message that miscarries and a journey that is doomed.

  One among the guardsmen has a shifting, restless eye

  And as they ride, he scans the hills that rise against the sky

  He wears a sword and bracelet worth more than he can afford

  And hidden in his baggage is a heavy, secret hoard.

  Of three things be wary, of a feather on a cat

  The shepherd eating mutton, and the guardsman that is fat.

  Little does the lady care what all the guardsmen know—

  That bandits ambush caravans that on these traderoads go.

  In spite of tricks and clever traps and alt that men can do

  The brigands seem to always sense which trains are false or true.

  Three things are most perilous—the shape that walks behind,

  The ice that will not hold you and the spy you cannot find.

  From ambush bandits screaming charge the packtrain and its prize

  And all but four within the train are taken by surprise

  And all but four are cut down as a woodsman fells a log;

  The guardsman and the lady and the maiden and the dog.

  Three things hold a secret—lady riding in a dream,

  The dog that sounds no warning, and the maid who does not scream.

  Then off the lady pulls her cloak, in armor she is clad—

  Her sword is out and ready, and her eyes are fierce and glad.

  The maiden makes a gesture, and the dog’s a cur no more—

  A wolf, sword-maid and sorceress now face the bandit corps.

  Three things never anger, or you will not live for long,

  A wolf with cubs, a man with power, and a woman’s sense of wrong.

  The lady and her sister by a single trader lone

  Were hired out to try to lay a trap all of their own

  And no one knew their plan except the two who rode that day

  For what you do not know you cannot ever give away!

  Three things is it better, far, that only two should know—

  Where treasure hides, who shares your bed, and how to catch your foe!

  The bandits growl a challenge, and the lady only grins

  The sorceress bows mockingly, and then the fight begins!

  When it ends there are but four left standing from that horde.

  The witch, the wolf, the traitor and the woman with the sword!

  Three things never trust in; the maiden sworn as pure,

  The vows a king has given, and the ambush that is “sure.”

  They strip the traitor naked and then whip him on his way

  Into the barren hillsides, like the folk he used to slay—

  And what of all the maidens that this filth despoiled, then slew?

  Why, as revenge, the sorceress makes him a woman too!

  Three things trust above all else—the horse on which you ride,

  The beast that guards your sleeping, and your sister at your side.

  (These songs can be heard on the tape Heralds, Harpers, and Havoc available from Off Centaur Publications, P.O. Box 424, El Cerrito CA 94530)

  Kerowyn’s Tale

  -- By the Sword (1991)--

  version t2.0 checked against original, spell checked, formatted. completed October 17, 2003

  BOOK ONE - Kerowyn's Ride

  One

  "Blessed—look out!"

  Everyone turned and stared; at Kero, and at the boy about to lose the towering platter of bread. The racket of pots and voices stopped, and Kerowyn's voice rang out in the silence like a trumpet call, but no one answered this call to arms. They all seemed confused or frozen with indecision. The scullion staggered two more steps forward; the edible sculpture, two clumsy, obese bread-deer (a stag and a reclining doe), began sliding from the oversized serving dish he was attempting to carry alone.

  Idiots! Kerowyn swore again, this time with an oath her mother would have blanched to hear, but it seemed as if she was the only one with the will or brains to act. She sprinted across the slickly damp floor of the kitchen, and caught the edge of the platter just as the enormous subtlety of sweet, egg-glazed dough started to head for the flagstones.

  The lumpy mountain stopped just short of the carved display plate's edge. She held it steady while young Derk, sweating profusely, regained his breath and his balance, and took the burden of twenty pounds of sweet, raisin-studded bread back from her.

  He got the thing properly settled on his shoulder and headed for the Great Hall to place it before the wedding party. Kero listened for a moment, then heard the shouts and applause from beyond the kitchen door as the bread sculpture appeared. The clamor in the kitchen resumed.

  Kero licked sweat from her upper lip, and sighed. She would have liked to have staggered backward and leaned against the wall to catch her breath, but she didn't dare take the time, not at this point in the serving. The moment she paused there would undoubtedly be three more near disasters; if she took her attention away from the preparations, the tightly-planned schedule would fall apart.

  She knew very well she really shouldn't be here. She probably should have been out there with the rest of the guests, playing Keep Lady; that was what would have been "proper."

  To the six hells with "proper." If Father wants this feast to be a success, I have to be in here, not playing the lady.

  The kitchen was as hot as any one of the six hells, and crowded with twice the number of people it was intended to hold. The cook, an immense man with the build of a wrestler, and his young helpers were all squeezed in behind one side of a huge table running the entire length of the kitchen. Normally they worked on both sides, but tonight the servers were running relay with platters and bowls on the other side, and may the gods help anyone in the way.

  Kero chivvied her recruited corps of horse-grooms out the door. They were a lot more used to being served from the beer pitchers they were carrying than doing the serving themselves. Then she spotted something out of the corner of her eye and paused long enough to snatch up a wooden spoon. She used it to reach across the expanse of scarred wooden tabletop and whack one of the pages on the knuckles. She got him to rights, too, trying to steal a fingerful of icing from the wedding cake standing in magnificent isolation on the end of the table butted up against the wall. The boy yelped and jumped back, colliding with one of the cook's helpers and earning himself a black look and another whack with a spoon.

  "Leave that be, Perry!" she scolded, brandishing the spoon at him. "That's for after the ceremony, and don't you forget it! You can eat yourself sick on the scraps tomorrow for all I care, but you leave it alone tonight, or more than your knuckles will be hurting, I promise you."

  The shock-haired boy whined a halfhearted apology and started to sulk; to stave off a sullen fit she shoved a handful of trencher slabs across the table at him and told him to go see that the minstrels were fed.

  Some day... spoiled brat. I wish Father'd send him back to his doting mama. A cat's more use than he is, especially when everybody's too busy to keep an eye on him.

  Fortunately, all Perry had to do was show up with the slabs of trencher bread and the minstrels would see to their own feeding. Kero hadn't met a songster yet that didn't know how to help himself at a feast.

  The first meat course was over; time for the vegetable pies, and the dishes straw-haired Ami had been plunging into her tub with frantic haste were done just in time. Kero sent the next lot in, laden with heavy pies and stacks of bowls, just as the remains of the venison and the poor, hacked up bits of the bread-deer came in.

  It's a good thing that monstrosity didn't hit the ground, she reflected soberly, snagging Perry as he slouched in behind the servers and sending him back out
again with towels for the wedding guests to wipe their greasy fingers. What with Dierna's family device being the red deer and all, her people would have taken that as a bad omen for sure. There was no subtlety for this course, thank all the gods and goddesses—

  Not that Father didn't want one. More dough sculpture, this time a rampant stag—as a testament to my darling brother's virility, no doubt. It's a good thing Cook had a fit over all the nonsense that was already going to wind up being crammed into the oven!

  There was a momentary lull, as the last of the emptied dishes arrived and the last of the servers staggered out; and everyone in the kitchen took a moment to sag over a table or against the wall, fanning overheated faces. Kero thought longingly of the cool night air just beyond the thick planks of the door at her back. But her father's Seneschal poked his nose in the doorway, and she pushed away from the worn wood with a suppressed sigh.

  "Any complaints so far?" she asked him, her voice clear and carrying above the murmur of the helpers and the roar of the fire under the ovens.

  "Just that the service is slow," Seneschal Wendar replied, mopping his bald head with his sleeve. "Audria's Teeth, child, how do you stand it in here? You could bake the next course on the counters!"

  Kero shrugged. Because I don't have a choice. "I'm used to it, I suppose, I've been here since before dawn. Anyway, you know I've supervised everything since before Mother died." The simple words only called up a dull ache now; that priest had been right—

  Damn him.

  —time did make sorrow fade, at least it had for her. Time, and being too busy to breathe.

  "I'm sorry I can't do much about the service," she continued, keeping an ear cocked for the sounds of the servers returning. "There's only so much stableboys and hire-swords can learn about the server's art in a couple of candlemarks."

  "I know that, my dear." The Seneschal, a thin, tired-looking man who had been the scribe and accountant with Rathgar's old mercenary company, laid a fatherly hand on her arm, and she resisted the urge to shrug it off. "I think you're doing remarkably well, better than I would have, and I mean that sincerely. I can't imagine how you've managed all this with as little help as you've had."

  Because Father was too tightfisted to hire extra help for me, and too full of pride to settle for anything less than a princely wedding feast. Lord Orsen Brodey consented to this marriage; Lord Orsen Brodey must be shown that we're no jumped-up barbarians... even if Rathgar's daughter has to spend the entire feast in the kitchen with the hirelings....

  She felt her cheeks and ears flush with anger. It wasn't fair, it wasn't—not that she really wanted to be out in the Great Hall either, showing off for potential suitors and their lord-fathers. Bad enough that Rathgar never thought of her; worse that he'd think of her only in terms of being marriage bait.

  Which he would, if he ever thought past Lordan's marriage... Lordan's far more important marriage. After all, he was the male and the heir... Kero was only a girl.

  Kero set her jaw and tried to look cheerful, or at least indifferent, but something of her resentment must have penetrated the careful mask of calm and competence she was trying to cultivate. Wendar patted her arm again and looked distressed.

  "I wish I could help," he said unhappily. "I told your father three years ago, when—when—"

  "When Mother died," Kero said shortly.

  He coughed. "Uh, indeed. I told him that you needed a housekeeper, but he wouldn't hear of it. He said you were already doing very well, and you didn't need any help."

  Kero clenched her teeth, then relaxed with an effort. "Somehow that doesn't surprise me. Father—" She clamped her lips tight on what she was going to say; it wouldn't do any good, it wouldn't change anything.

  But the sentence went on inside her head. Father never really notices anything about me so long as I stay out of sight, his dinner arrives on time, and the Keep doesn't smell like a stable. I suppose if anyone had mentioned that a fourteen-year-old girl shouldn't be forced into the job of Keep Lady alone, he'd have said that the girls in his village were married and mothers by fourteen. Never mind that the most any of them had to manage alone was a two-room cottage and a flock of sheep, and usually didn't like even that....

  She sighed, and finished her sentence in a way that wouldn't put more strain on Wendar than he was already coping with. "Father had other things to worry about. And so do you, Wendar. You've got a hall full of guests out there, and no one keeping an eye on the servitors."

  Wendar swore, and hurried back toward the door into the Great Hall, just as the wave of servants returned with the dirty dishes from the last course. Wendar sidestepped the rush, and dodged between two of them and through the doorway.

  Stuffed pigeons were next; a course that required nothing more than the bread trenchers. That would give the kitchen staff enough time to clean the platters now being brought in before the fish course of eel pies was served.

  A full High Feast, and who was it had to figure out how our little backwoods Keep could come up with enough courses to satisfy the requirements? Me, of course. Tubs full of eel in the garden for days, the moat stocked with fish in a net-pen, crates of pigeons and hens driving us all crazy... let's not talk about the rest of the livestock. Kero rubbed her arms, and rerolled the sleeves of her flour-covered, homespun shirt a little higher. Damn these skirts. Breeches would be easier. The helpers get to wear breeches, so why can't I? She wondered if Dierna had any notion of how much work a High Feast was. She ought to; she'd been trained by the Sisters of Agnetha—in fact she'd been sent to the Sisters' cloister at the ripe age of eight, so she ought to have had time to learn the "womanly arts."

  Dierna ought to have had proper instruction in those womanly arts too, as well as the art of being womanly, whatever that meant... unlike Kero, as Rathgar was so prone to remind her whenever she failed to live up to his notion of "womanly."

  Selective memory, she told herself bitterly. He keeps forgetting that he was the one who decided he couldn't do without me. Wheat-crowned Agnetha was Rathgar's idea of the appropriate sort of deity for a lady to worship—unlike wild, horse-taming Agnira, Kero's favorite. There was a shrine to Agnetha in the Keep chapel, though the other aspects of the LadyTrine were only represented by little bas-reliefs carved into the pedestal of Agnetha's statue. There in the heart of the chapel, Agnetha smiled with honeyed sweetness over her twin babies, her wheat sheaves at her feet, her cloak of fruit-laden vines around her, her distaff dangling from her belt of flowers, sheep gazing up at her adoringly. While on the pedestal, alternating snowflakes and hoofprints were all there was to show of the other two aspects, Agnoma and Agnira. Rathgar approved of Agnetha, occasionally waxing maudlin over his somewhat sketchy devotion when in his cups.

  Well, after the feast, the wedding, and the month-long bridal moon, Kero could probably give up the keys of the Keep to Dierna. That would bring an end to the farce of pretending to enjoy being mewed up in the kitchen, still-room or bower day after endlessly boring day. Dierna was pliant enough to satisfy both Rathgar and his son, and she seemed competent when Kero had taken her on a quick tour when the girl first arrived.

  Kero shook herself out of her reverie as the servitors appeared with platters piled high with soaked trencher bread. She had them dump the bread into sacks waiting for distribution to the poor. Time for the bowls and eel-pies.

  Cook was head-and-shoulders deep into the oven, removing the next subtlety, and Kero overheard one of his assistants giving orders for the pies to be carried out first.

  "Hold it right there!" she snapped, freezing the servants where they stood. She stalked to the table, plain brown linen skirts flaring, and countermanded the order, physically taking a pie away from one poor confused lad and shoving a pile of clean bowls into his hands instead. The harried young man didn't care; all he wanted was someone to give him the right thing to carry in, and tell him what he was to do with it.

  Kero repeated the instructions she'd given them all for the soup course
, as she passed out further piles of bowls. "One bowl for every two guests, put the bowl between them, when you've finished placing the bread, go to the sideboard, get trencher bread, give each guest a trencher, then come back and get a pie."

  It made a kind of chant as she repeated herself for each servingman. Outside, Wendar would be directing the men to their tables; no matter that they'd been going to the same places all night. By now they were tired and numb with the noise and the work, and all they were thinking of was when the feast could be over so they could eat and drink themselves into a celebratory stupor.

  Dierna was probably beginning to wilt under all this by now. That much Kero didn't envy her. When the older girl had taken her on that round of the Keep duties, she'd been a little shy—and Kero knew very well how sheltered the girls trained by the Sisters tended to be. Not ignorant, no; the Sisters made certain their charges were well-educated in the realities of life as well as domestic skills. But perhaps that was the problem; Dierna was like a young squire who has watched swordwork all his young life and only now, at fifteen, was going to pick up a blade. She knew what was supposed to happen, but was unprepared for the reality of the situation.

  The first of the servitors returned for his pie, and Kero made certain he didn't take it without a towel wrapped about his hands. She wondered, as she passed out towels and pies in a seemingly endless stream, what Rathgar would do or say the first time dinner was inedible or there were no clean shirts for him.

  Probably nothing. Or else he'd find a way to blame Kero.

  What is wrong with the man? she asked herself in frustration for the thousandth time. I'm doing the best that I can with what he allows me! It wouldn't be so bad if he didn't pick faults that no one else cares about. Maybe if I'd talked him round to doing without me and gone to the cloister....

  She watched the cook prepare the next subtlety, an enormous copy of the Keep itself complete with edible landscaping, and made sure that two men were assigned to carry it out. The mingled odors of meat and fish and fowl weren't at all appetizing right now; in fact, they made her stomach churn. When this was all over, the most she'd want would be bread and cheese, and maybe a little cider.